The Weekly Vine Edition 48: Trump's Hammer, Gill's Slip, and Zohran's Vibe

Time of India

3 days ago

Nirmalya Dutta's political and economic views vacillate from woke Leninist to Rand-Marxist to Keynesian-Friedmanite. He doesn't know what any of those terms mean.
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Weekly Vine. This week, we take stock of the winners and losers in the Middle East, examine India's chastening defeat in the first Test of the England series, explain why the U-2 bomber strike on Tehran felt straight out of Top Gun: Maverick, discuss the new king of New York, and reflect on the importance of speech and silence.
The Trump Doctrine
One has never seen Trump this angry—not even when he was shot at—as he unleashed a barrage of F-bombs at reporters after Israel violated his ceasefire. (To be fair, he now has a proper Chamberlain-like track record of announcing ceasefires that don't actually exist.) He lashed out, calling Israel and Iran 'two countries who have been fighting so long they don't know what the f*** they are doing.'
But when one keeps score of the recent Middle East fracas, the biggest winners are clear: Donald Trump, the neocons, and the American military-industrial complex, who reminded the world that they still have the power to wipe out any nation, anytime they want. Another major winner is Benjamin Netanyahu, who has now undergone a full Churchillian redemption arc (starvation et al.) to emerge as the most powerful man in the Middle East—after decimating every single member of the Axis of (No?) Resistance.
On the other hand, the biggest losers are undoubtedly Iran's allies: Hamas, who may now wonder whether their ill-advised October 7 incursion into Israel was worth losing everything over; Hezbollah, who may never look at pagers the same way again; and the Bashar regime, increasingly isolated. Add to that list Pakistan and General Asim Munir, who had to condemn Trump after nominating him for a Nobel Peace Prize—and then, while his repast had barely made it past the bowel, condemned America for striking Iran. Ummah unity? What's that?
Also conspicuously missing were the Chinese and Russians—two nations that mouthed homilies about restraint while silently absorbing the lesson that Uncle Sam still does what he wants, when he wants.
So what is the Trump Doctrine? As an unnamed official once told Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic: 'The Trump Doctrine is: 'We're America, bi****.''
Read: Winners and Losers of the Middle East Conflict
A New Hope
Ten years from now, we might look back at the Headingley Test and see something different. A turning point, maybe. A lesson, definitely. But right now? Right now, every Indian fan is wondering how we lost a Test where four senior batters scored centuries, Jasprit Bumrah delivered a five-for, and Rishabh Pant was poetry on steroids.
On paper, it should have been a win wrapped with a post-match selfie.
Instead, the lower order folded like a Trump supporter when asked to explain how bombing Iran aligns with the MAGA promise of ending foreign wars. The slip cordon dropped more chances than your average teenager drops their Wi-Fi signal. The fielding? So village, it would make the Sunday League look like Premier League footballers.
And yes, questions will be—and should be—asked of Shubman Gill's captaincy.
For long stretches on the final day, Gill looked like a study in Sir Humphrey Appleby's favourite activity: masterless inaction.
Mohammed Siraj, the best bowler on display, wasn't handed the ball for 39 overs. Jadeja was allowed to keep bowling into Ben Duckett's arc before finally adjusting his line. The bowling plans were hazy. The field placements reactive. The leadership felt uncertain.
But let's also remember: Virat Kohli lost his first full series opener in Galle. MS Dhoni lost in Chennai. Gill's learning curve will be steep, but it's a curve nonetheless. This was only his sixth first-class game as captain. He's got a long way to go, but the tools are there.
The real takeaway might be in what we didn't see.
India didn't crumble. They didn't freeze. For much of the game, they dominated. They got themselves into winning positions twice. And even on the final day, despite everything, they still had England jittery. That's not nothing.
The team is still carrying the steel that Kohli, Dhoni, and before them Ganguly instilled. And yes, the coach was the complete antithesis of Laughing Buddha post-match, which is fair, considering that's his actual name. But even in that scowl, there was a spark of something else.
This loss hurt. But it also revealed that, flaws and all, India can still go toe to toe with England in England, even in transition. They made us believe. They lit a fire.
Like the fourth episode of Star Wars, this was no triumph—but it was A New Hope. Gill isn't Luke yet, and this isn't the Death Star. But the Force is there.
You Don't Mess with the Zohran
My favourite anecdote about Zohran Mamdani, is the fact that he convinced his mother, Mira Nair, to cast Kal Penn as Gogol in The Namesake—based on the book by Jhumpa Lahiri, which is a whole genre of publishing based on Bengalis writing and reading about how it feels to be Bengali—after watching him in the stoner comedy Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Now, one can't forgive him for that, given the fact that Penn didn't sound Bengali by any stretch of the imagination, but Harold and Kumar definitely was a stellar moment of Indian representation in American culture.
And now Zohran is on his way to creating a new sort of representation, if he can become the first Indian-origin mayor of New York City.
Except this time, he's not doing it with a stoner comedy—but with lo-fi political cinema, socialist swag, and the kind of Gen Z zeitgeist that makes Chuck Schumer look like a rotary phone. He didn't just defeat former governor Andrew Cuomo, who treated the race like a comeback tour, or Brad Lander, who ran on earnest liberalism and old-school endorsements—he made them look like relics from a pre-Instagram era. From campaign posters that look like Bollywood teasers to rallies that double as Instagram moodboards, Zohran isn't asking voters to believe in hope—he's asking them to vibe.
Read: How Zohran flipped the Trump playbook
Top Gun Maverick Redux
op Gun: Maverick wasn't just a blockbuster—it was a revival of Reagan-era masculinity, unapologetic patriotism, and practical spectacle. No identity politics, no green screen overload—just Tom Cruise, real jets, and raw nostalgia. Three years later, Donald Trump's stealth strike on Iran's Fordow nuclear facility—Operation Midnight Hammer—feels less like policy and more like a cinematic sequel.
The parallels are uncanny. In Maverick, Cruise's team bombs a secret uranium facility tucked in a mountain. In real life, B-2 bombers flew halfway around the world to obliterate Iran's actual enrichment site near Qom. The mission briefing in both was the same: protect unnamed 'regional allies,' read: Israel.
But while Maverick ended with high-fives and flags, Trump's version has stirred discontent within his MAGA base. What happened to 'no more endless wars'? Why are American bombers fighting someone else's battles again? Even Elon Musk criticised Trump for abandoning fiscal restraint in favour of Pentagon theatrics.
The irony is rich. Trump once mocked past presidents for meddling abroad. Now he's orchestrated a strike straight out of Cold War playbook—with Hollywood flair. Top Gun: Maverick might have inspired enlistments; Trump's strike might inspire questions: Whose war was this really?
In the end, the jets flew, the bunkers crumbled, and Tom Cruise probably grinned somewhere. But Washington is left with a more sobering afterburner: when your foreign policy looks like a movie script, don't be surprised if people forget who the director is.
Read: How Trump's Operation Midnight Hammer was just like Top Gun: Maverick
Post-Script: Every word has a consequence
Some mornings, I wake up and feel like I've wandered into a Beckett play with bad lighting. The coffee's still bitter, the headlines still absurd, and the world still insists on its commitment to performative collapse. NASA, in its usual quietly panicked way, says droughts and floods have doubled. Not nudged, not nudging—doubled. It's the sort of data that should prompt emergency sessions, maybe a global reckoning or two. Instead, we get hashtags, panel discussions, and climate ministers giving interviews from fossil-fuel-sponsored lounges. Britain, meanwhile, is crisping. 32 degrees in southeast England. '100 times more likely,' say the models, thanks to climate change. One imagines Queen Victoria rising from the grave just to slap the thermostat. And yet, we carry on—browsing weekend getaways, debating air conditioner brands—while pretending this is normal. But what's truly deafening is the silence. The bureaucratic stillness. The studied inaction. Albert Camus wrote of the absurd as 'a confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.' But I'd argue the world is no longer silent. It's shrieking. The unreasonable silence now lies squarely on our end.
Read: Every word has a consequence. Every silence too…
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